The favoured term this time around is "employability"

The favoured term this time around is "employability"


Employees need a 'can-do' attitude - but so do businesses

As dole queues rise across the UK, employers are complaining that they can't find people willing and able to work. It is a familiar refrain. The favoured term this time around is "employability".

By Ian Smith

6:15PM BST 25 Aug 2011

It appeared in the anguished discussion about the future of communities involved in and affected by the recent riots. It even features in the national debate about the growing number students with degrees who are struggling to find graduate-level work.

When employers deploy this term they are not simply indulging themselves with the latest management buzzword. It is a concept that has profound implications for the future of Britain's workforce. After all, every potential employee faces an "employability" test – if your skills and behaviour don't live up to the expectations of your employer then you are shown the door.

Employers' groups used to highlight the poor basic academic and/or practical skills of candidates as the reason for not hiring British job applicants. But now the consistent excuse for looking outside the UK is behaviour and particularly "attitude". Increasingly, senior managers in big businesses point to this failure as justification for moving work abroad or to defend hiring foreign workers to do it instead.

On skills, the Government has shown it is aware and willing to address the failure of basic learning. Thursday's GCSE results were encouraging and the Department of Education is focusing more closely on key academic subjects in the curriculum. Universal literacy and numeracy is vital – there are very few low-skilled manual labour jobs left.

Yet Education Secretary Michael Gove's shift back to traditional subjects and exams runs the risk of downplaying other valuable learning styles.

What it also misses is the crucial action that is needed to address attitude and behaviour. Here society as a whole, rather than the state, is letting young people down.

If the "attitude" of potential British recruits is deemed unacceptable by so many employers, who do they expect will fix this? I am utterly fed up of sitting in meetings listening to people blaming their own failures on the poor work ethic of some staff or potential recruits.

It is clear to me that some companies neither understand nor care about their responsibilities to the communities they serve and where their employees live. They moan about the poor attitude, attendance, punctuality, motivation and a general lack of "can do", particularly of young people entering employment.

Yet more enlightened British employers and many overseas multinationals overcome the failings of our educational system by paying to develop their employees. They also understand they have a responsibility to the community and encourage their staff to volunteer. The charity I chair, Young Enterprise, could not exist without tens of thousands of employees who gave up time last year to act as Young Enterprise business mentors in schools, colleges and universities.

"Attitude" lessons can't be inserted into the National Curriculum. Yet attitude is infectious. It can't be taught, but it can be caught. Smart employers know that the volunteers they release into schools to inspire young people bring that inspiration back to the workplace.

So we need more enlightened employers to restore those lost links between workplaces and schools and the long-term unemployed. We also need the Education Department to recognise the value of business volunteering.

The problem is that since the Education Secretary was at school many more distractions have appeared to divert young people's attention. Trying to get schoolchildren focused on tougher academic subjects by just saying to them "you must do this because it's good for you" is not going to work.

I know that when volunteers deliver enterprise programmes which allow pupils to learn by doing, many young people get it and understand why they need the core numeracy, literacy, IT and communication skills they have to display.

What is clear is that British business has to hold up a mirror to itself and admit that it is too complacent. The CBI has just dismissed a Government proposal to extend training levies to encourage all companies to develop the skills of their existing workforce. The CBI rightly points out that 90pc of employers provide some sort of training compared with 60pc in mainland Europe. But my question is if British training is so good why do so many insist they have to hire immigrants because of the work-shy "attitude'' of British nationals? Could it be that they are recruiting them and training them the wrong way? Once we recognise that there is an issue that needs to be tackled and then go about solving the problem we will start down the road to economic recovery and growth.

Of course, we need more young people to take responsibility for their own lives. Success is not appearing on The X Factor or marrying a footballer. Nothing worth having is easy. But my message to business is simple. Stop complaining about "attitude" if you are doing nothing change it. Attitude is contagious – go out and infect someone.

Ian Smith is chairman of Young Enterprise, founder of AndersonBick consultants and former senior vice-president of Oracle UK, Ireland and Israel